


Flickers in Time

by reciprocityfic



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reciprocityfic/pseuds/reciprocityfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She is damaged and broken, as is he, but she remains. Brave, strong,<br/>beautiful. And they must fight for each other."  A collection of oneshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Proposal

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: GOOD NEWS NO MORE WRITERS BLOCK :DDD So, this summer I started writing oneshots. A bunch of these really random oneshots. Spanning all of the seasons and all of the timelines. And posting them all individually seemed silly. Hence, this story was born.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe.

**_proposal – season 3, "the day we died" future_ **

He buys her a ring the morning after she leaves him cold and alone in Barrett's backyard. He drowns in his guilt and self-loathing, chokes on it, as he slips the black box into his coat pocket. He keeps it there, and its slight weight serves as a reminder that he  _must_  fix this, no matter how bumpy the road, how painstaking the journey back to the way they were. Every time she flinches from his touch, whenever her eyes abruptly dart towards anything but him, anytime he thinks that it might be easier to simply  _give up_ , he runs his fingers over the dark velvet of the ring case and  _swears_  that one day she will wear the jewelry inside.

He only removes it when she kisses him and he tastes forgiveness. He tucks the box away in the top drawer of his dresser, somewhere between his socks and his boxers, confident with the knowledge that one day, he would offer the ring to her and one day, she would accept. Perhaps he would make her dinner, take her for a walk through Harvard Yard on a warm summer evening. Drop down on one knee, ask her gently. Slip the ring onto her finger. Make her his forever.

It doesn't happen that way.

They lose half of Chicago to a vortex in a single day, must quarantine even more than that. He stands there and watches white gas swirl up over the city, turning to hard amber. She walks away, fiddling with her phone. An hour later, after the scene is more or less cleaned up, he finds her sitting in the passenger seat of their SUV, windows down, the hot breeze ruffling wisps of her hair. Her head rests in her hands.

"Olivia. I saw you leave. I thought you just got a call or something, but then I couldn't find – "

He stops. She's looked up. Her eyes are wet and red-rimmed, cheeks damp as strands of hair blow and stick to the trails left on her skin by tears. His insides twist with concern.

"What is it?"

"Ella is fine. I called her, and she's at a friend's house ten miles from here. But Rachel…"

His stomach drops.

"Rachel won't pick up," she finishes. "She won't answer my calls." Her words are flat, but he can sense the hidden emotion, the grief lurking just beneath the surface of her even voice.

"Olivia…"

"I want to go home, Peter."

So he drives her home, zooming past other cars on the highway late at night, her staring silently out the window as reports are submitted to them. They learn the extent of the damage – almost an entire city lost. Hundreds of thousands of casualties, ranging from bureau agents to government officials to innocent bystanders to Rachel Dunham.

When they arrive home in the early morning, she moves from the car without a word. He only can follow her as she unlocks the door, stands in the front room like it's foreign to her, like she doesn't know what to do with herself. She moves suddenly, erratically, going to each window in the house and opening it wide. He cannot speak, only stands in the doorway, his eyes following her every movement.

She feels his gaze, and whips her head up to look at him. Her eyes are hard, pupils dilated to the point that all he sees is black.

"It's too damn hot in here," she mumbles at him, as if she owes him an explanation. Then she carries on with her task.

Still, no words leave his lips. He knows that there is nothing he could say to make this better for her.

She starts upstairs, and once again he follows her with a heavy sigh, closing the front door and making his way to the second floor with slow, tired steps.

He turns into their bedroom. She's opened all the windows here as well, stripping to her underwear and throwing on a white t-shirt before plopping down on the bed and curling up on her side, knees pulled to her chest. He walks over to her, lets his fingertips gently graze the bare skin of her leg.

"Olivia," he whispers.

"Don't," she tells him, retreating more into herself, away from him. "Just don't."

He closes his eyes, rubs his temples slowly as he concedes for the moment, walking over to the dresser and setting his hands flat on top. He knows that she's not mad at him, only at the situation. At the injustice dealt her. At loss of life. At the world, crumbling in her hands as she tries desperately to hold it together, the people she loves slipping through her fingers.

He opens the top drawer.

After all, if you don't have your family, who do you fight for?

He looks down, and as if God himself placed it there in front of his eyes, he sees the black ring box. Different house, different dresser, but still hidden among his undergarments. It serves as a reminder of all the things he still has. Everything he could still lose.

All he must still protect.

Because somehow, through everything, they continue to stand, together and united.

They must fight for each other.

He picks up the box, turning it over in his fingers.

He has no words for her. But maybe he can give her hope.

He walks over to her, and crouches down. She does not look at him at first, stares past him toward the open window as tears silently fall down her face. Her skin is covered with a light layer of sweat and dust, her hair tangled. She is damaged and broken, as is he, but she remains. Brave, strong, beautiful. And they must fight for each other.

He slowly reaches out his hand and places it on her face, softly rubbing his thumb in soothing circles on her cheek until she closes her eyes and brings both her hands up to hold his firmly in place where it rests. Finally, she looks at him. Her pupils have shrunk, revealing her lovely green irises once again. She stares at him, her gaze so vulnerable and defeated. The question is nearly a whisper, yet it seems to echo in the quiet room.

"Will you marry me?"

She doesn't answer, has no perceptible reaction to his proposal except for the slight widening of her eyes and the almost undetectable increase of pressure on his hand. He fidgets nervously, placing the black box on the bed and opening it. Her eyes move from his face to the ring. Now, he can only play a waiting game. Maybe it is silly for him to fear her answer. It won't change much. Either way, he'll still be here, fighting for her.

Even so, he begins to count.

He reaches ninety-three Mississippis before he sees what he was longing for. The ghost of a smile plays on her lips. Her eyes fill with tears again, but this time they shine as water falls and his heart swells.

"Yes."


	2. Kick

**_kick - season 4_ **

She's at twenty-two weeks, and now has a very clear, distinct bump protruding from between her hips. She feels like a house, but whenever she voices this to him he smiles, wrapping his arms around her.  _"You've never looked more beautiful,"_ he murmurs against her cheek, and she turns in his arms to scold him for lying, but she keeps quiet because something in his eyes makes her think that he might not be.

It's Friday evening, a little past eight, and she rolls her eyes between suffering fits of laughter at the movie that he's picked for them tonight. A vengeful, undead turkey is literally killing college students with an axe onscreen for eating him and his brethren on Thanksgiving Day.

"You didn't  _actually_ think this would be scary, did you?" she asks when she finds the chance to breathe.

"C'mon. A zombie turkey going around axing college kids? This is horror gold." The smirk on his face tells her no, he didn't believe this film would be terrifying generations to come. He just wanted to put a smile on her face after she pulled out the Thai takeout menu, slowly collecting dust, with a frown. He knows that all she wants is a bowl of red curry and spicy lamb noodles, but that the heartburn would make her esophagus feel like a California wildfire, so while perusing the titles at the one video rental store still left in the city, he decided to pick up something that would make her laugh.

As they settle down on the couch with peanut-butter sandwiches on wheat and glasses of skim milk, he knows he's succeeded.

The sound of Olivia Dunham full-out  _giggling_  may be his favorite sound in the entire world. And he prides himself on the fact that he's making her do it at least once every three minutes.

He notices, then, very quickly when it abruptly stops.

He turns to her, watches her stare over her belly with wide eyes. He is immediately consumed with concern for his tiny, almost-family.

"Olivia."

She wordlessly takes his hand and places it firmly on the left side of the swell of her stomach. A thrill shoots through him, as he knows what she's trying to let him feel, what he's been longing to experience ever since he heard her say those two words in a hospital room mere hours after her thought he lost her for good.

His fingers begin to drum against her skin impatiently.

"Liv…"

"Wait for it," she cautions him.

Then, suddenly, he feels it. The gentle thump against his palm, coming from  _inside_ her body. He feels it twice more before looking up at her with awe-filled eyes.

"That's our – "

She cuts him off with a short nod of her head and a bite of her lip. Liquid shines in her green eyes. He could cry himself, but he has sworn he will save his happy tears until he sees that face, staring up at him from a cocoon of soft, warm blankets.

Instead, he brings his mouth down to the firm skin of her ever-growing belly, and presses his lips directly over the spot where he felt the pressure.

He whispers, "Hi, Baby Girl."


	3. Baby

**_baby – season 4 (pregnancy)_ **

"She had a baby."

He whispers this to her one night in the darkness so quietly, and she so close to sleep, that she thinks she might've dreamed it. Her head raises slightly from where it lay on his chest. She squints.

"What?"

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then tilts his chin up to stare at the ceiling. He's quite hesitant, she observes, and counts him start and stop three times before he finally speaks.

"She had a baby."

She frowns, turning over so she can see him better. He's still gazing at the ceiling. Her hand drifts unconsciously over her stomach.

"Who had a baby?"

He swallows deeply.

" _She_ did."

"Peter – "

" _Olivia_ ," he says, at last turning to look at her. She inhales sharply. Even in the dark bedroom, the guilt, shame, and utter  _agony_ in his eyes are blaring.

And she realizes that his utterance of her name does not address her. It's an answer.

She's quiet.

"Olivia," he says again, running a hand over his face. He pulls at his skin. "In the original timeline. When…" He trails off, staring up at the ceiling again.

She wants to get up, but she's frozen.

"She got pregnant and she had a  _baby_."

It's like she's encased in amber, and she wants to move so badly, but no limb will budge even a millimeter.

"I don't even know how it happened. There's no way it was nine months from the time she left to when I got in the machine. How many was it? I don't remember exactly. Three, I think. Or four. But not nine. Definitely not nine."

He's rambling now. Peter Bishop has two nervous habits: the trick with the coin, and words. When he's anxious, words flow from his tongue like water from a broken dam.

She can't move.

"But it happened, somehow. The Observer showed him to me when I went into his mind. When you were abducted by David Robert Jones. A little baby boy. He was wrong, of course. He wasn't supposed to happen. But he was alive."

She doesn't miss the adoration she hears in his voice. Not that she can blame him, she supposes. Sometimes we can't help who we love. And he is his  _child_.

Though, not hers.

"God, 'Livia,  _please_  say something."

She wants to. She wants to open her mouth. She wants to scream. But she  _can't move_.

He waits a few moments, and then sighs. She can almost feel the frustration and remorse radiating from his body as he laughs grimly.

"Not that it matters anymore. I killed him."

Her right index finger twitches.

"I went into the machine and I joined the two universes. And then I obliterated myself from existence. Which successfully cancelled him out too. I never even met him. Hell, I never even  _knew_ about him. I had a child. I had a  _son_ …But again, not that it matters. Because I killed him. I didn't even know him, and I still found a way to destroy him."

He pauses. She moves her finger back and forth.

He whispers, "I'm sorry."

As he moves to lie down, one of his silent tears falls on her shoulder. It's warm on her skin as it slides down, leaving a damp trail that leads to the crease of her elbow, where it settles and pools.

She begins to thaw.

*          *         *

Pain is a funny thing, she decides. How it can tear apart your life, make it nearly unlivable, and only days later, after a kiss or a cry or a long talk, be gone, its weak echo the only thing left to play in your heart and mind. How months, or even years, after it departs, it can come back with a vengeance. Old wounds are torn open, and as you lay injured and bleeding, you wonder how you even forgot about it in the first place.

This is what happens to her.

She feels like she's sitting on the floor in front of her washing machine again with damp, dark hair and a broken heart, his shirt in a ball next to her, realizing that she'd never had him, and maybe never would.

She feels her baby flutter inside her, and she wonders if  _she_  will take every first from her. If he is destined to be handed down to her only after others have stolen what should have been hers. Was it not  _their_  first date?  _Their_  first time?  _Their_  first child?

Peter Bishop has two nervous tics. Olivia Dunham has one: solitude. She does not talk to him for six days after he tells her. He does not push her, and she is grateful. She needs time to sort this out. He knows this. No matter how much he'd rather she wouldn't, when facing great pressure or emotional distress, Olivia resorted inside herself. It's who she is. It was who she'd become, after what happened to her as a child, after everyone betrayed her and she was the only one who could save herself. So he let her be, and kissed her goodnight every evening, telling her how much he loved her, how sorry he was, and waited patiently for the moment when she was ready to talk.

On day seven, she has an epiphany.

She's washing dishes by hand, and in the middle of the process of meticulously scrubbing a butter knife until it shines, she realizes that through everything, he is here. In her universe. In her apartment. Sitting at her table. Sharing her bed. With her.

He is still hers.

The baby moves as if in affirmation.  _His_  baby, growing inside of her. A child who he wants, a child who he knows, a child who he already loves.

They are both hers.

The past is the past. She cannot fix it. She cannot change it. Why dwell on it? She shouldn't linger on things that are over and done with, that technically never happened here in this timeline. Why nurse wounds that have already healed?

He is hers.

She puts down her butter knife, and walks over to the kitchen table, where he sits, filling out the crossword puzzle in the daily paper.

"Hey," she says.

He looks up immediately, his eyes wide and hopeful. She smiles at him.

"Hey yourself," he answers.

It's their first exchange in a week. As they stare at each other, he sighs sadly.

"Olivia…"

She shakes her head, leaning down and kissing him gently. Her lips say everything she needs him to hear - that he's completely forgiven, that she loves him, that he is hers and she is his and that's what matters.

When she pulls away, she gazes at him. He is smiling, but his eyes cannot hide from her the immense hurt he still feels.

She frowns. She supposes she's almost disregarding the fact that he  _lost a child_. And that he thinks he is responsible. He isn't, and she almost says that, but it will only end in an argument that she doesn't want to have right now.

She presses her palm against the firm skin of her belly, where her child lives and grows, safe, strong, and healthy. She lets herself imagine - for one unbearable, terrifying moment - what it would feel like if something happened. If they were taken from her. If they were lost forever. And if it was even in the least bit her fault.

The pain is  _crippling_. Oppressive. She wants to weep for the both of them, him and his baby.

Instead, she puts her hand on his face, tenderly stroking his cheek with her thumb.

She asks, "What was his name?"

He grins softly, as tears begin to fall from his blue eyes.

"Henry. His name was Henry."


	4. Washington

**_washington – season 2, post 2x20_ **

Washington is cold.

_And wet_ , she muses, as she stares out of the window of the diner and out at the light drizzle that has seemed to perpetually fall since she arrived. A car drives through a puddle, spraying the road with dirty water.

Cold, wet, and  _Peter_. He told her that he hated the cold. She wonders idly, then, why it seemed to suit him so well.

She wonders if it's cold, wherever he is now.

The sound of Walter's straw sucking the final contents from his glass makes her turn her head to where the old man sits across from her, his hat still on, his old wool coat gray and thick around his shoulders. He's just finished his fourth root beer float. What other people would drown in alcohol, Dr. Bishop drowns in sugar. (And heinous blends of illegal narcotics, but she made it clear that she would be having  _none_  of that as long as he was primarily in her custody.)

God knows that she would be well on her way through a bottle of  _anything_  if she didn't have a sixty-odd year-old child to take care of.

Looking back on it, she doesn't know exactly what she expected, coming here.

She thought she would  _see_  him, at least. Speak with him. And maybe convince him to return.

Because she should be so lucky, to have him call Broyles and inform him of his location. To have him still be at that location by the time she arrived. To have him stay  _over here_.

But then, she'd never believed in luck.

She's looking at Walter tentatively, waiting for him to burst. He hasn't cried yet. Or screamed, or had any sort of emotional outburst. Not that she's complaining, because she's never been comfortable with sorting out other people's eruptions of feelings. Especially not ones as drastic and sudden as Walter Bishop's.

She waits for one, on edge. Trying desperately to figure out what she'll do when it happens.

He looks up at her for the first time in thirty minutes, and his old eyes are so broken, the wrinkles in his skin deep and defined.

She's sure it's coming.

"Walter."

Instead, he surprises her.

"He's not coming back, is he?" The question is said quietly, evenly, devoid of any of the passion that usually infects the old man's speech.

She looks away, biting her bottom lip until the usually pink flesh turns white.

She'd always thought he would. Always. Even in those darkest moments, even on those days when the pain of his leaving hurt so bad that she didn't know if she could stand it, she'd always held a firm belief that Peter  _would_ come back.

She'd reminded Walter of this countless times. She'd always countered his words of doubt with a vehement  _"Yes, he will."_

As she turns back to him now, blinking back tears because she will  _not_ let herself cry in front of Walter Bishop, a different answer comes to her mouth. It tastes terrible on her tongue, like dirt. Like vomit. And she wants to swallow it back down, but she can't. It chokes her, pushes on her lips until it's all she can do to let it out.

The truth of the word, dropped solemn and heavy into the tense air, startles her.

"No."


	5. Eternal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own the quote, it comes from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Which is an absolutely awesome movie, go watch it if you haven't.

**_eternal – season 4_ **

Memory is not infallible.

You don't recall every name, and there are faces that you used to know so well that you don't recognize anymore. Moments fade, experiences slip through the sieve of your consciousness. You do not remember, even though you may want to, even though you try desperately to hold on. You do not remember.

Memory is not infallible. The brain forgets.

The heart does not.

The heart changes, the heart clings. The heart will hang on to the bitter end, as you make love to her under sheets as the ceiling crumbles down on you. As you walk around in a world that is not your own, live with shells of the people you care about, who try to leech the color from your dreams, and you think of mornings filled with promise.

The heart pleads.

_"Please let me keep this memory. Just this one."_


	6. Ask

**_ask - season 3, post 3x08_ **

She wishes things could just effortlessly go back to the way they were. Before Peter left, before she was taken. Before she was replaced and no one seemed to notice. (Although, she's sure they noticed. She's sure they did. They may not have _acted_ on anything, or confronted the other her. But they did notice. She's sure they noticed.)

They don't.

Broyles tells her to take time off of work, saying that she should rest and recover before returning to duty. She went through an ordeal, and she needs to take it easy for a little while. Everyone else seems to emphatically agree with him. And, look, she _gets_ that she's been through a lot recently. She recognizes that they took over her mind and pumped her full of drugs and tried to kill her. But she's okay now. She feels fine. And she knows who she is.

Really, the only thing she feels like doing is trying to catch the bastards that did all of that shit to her. And she can do that better from her office than from her living room. At her office, there's always the background hum of people working in the lab, a sharp mind to bounce ideas off, and extra set of eyes to read the files and try to pick up on things she might've missed. And someone to bring her coffee and a sandwich at lunch when she forgets to eat.

At home, it's just her at the coffee table, her glasses on her nose and five or six file folders spread out in front of her. A bowl of dry corn flakes and a nearly-empty glass of whiskey sit on the floor by her feet. She can only read the files a handful of times before the words start to blur together, and it's so damn quiet that her mind starts to wander. She just isn't used to working in silence anymore, and noise doesn't distract her now. It helps her focus. Without it, her thoughts begin to drift. And then she starts to dwell on things that she shouldn't be thinking about, turning them over in her mind, like the fact that someone has been living in her apartment for the past few months and all the food in the refrigerator was bought by _her_ and the glass she's drinking out of was washed by _her_ and I wonder if she sat on the couch reading case files like this or if she went to the lab. I wonder who she liked to use as a sounding board and I wonder if they brought her black coffee with one sugar and turkey on wheat with lettuce, tomato, and mustard. I wonder if she pretended to drink my whiskey and that's why no one said anything and I wonder if she washed these sweatpants or if I did and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

(And she _misses_ her office at the lab. And the people that work there. A lot. She wants to go back there and re-stake her claim on the place and its citizens, proving that they were never _hers_. It was her desk, they were her friends, and damn it, they _noticed_ , alright?)

She wishes people were like rubber bands, that no matter how oddly they were stretched and contorted by some outside force, they snapped back completely, without hesitation, without complication.

They aren't.

Everyone treats her like she's some precious china doll, like she came back with the word 'fragile' stamped across her forehead in bold, red, capital letters. She's not different. She's Special Agent Olivia Dunham, Fringe Division, and she's strong, brave, and ready to go. So everyone can stop walking on eggshells around her, and thinking that if they so much as blink too hard in her direction she'll shatter into a billion pieces.

And Peter…

Well, she wishes Peter would just _ask her out_ , for God's sake.

She crossed to another universe to save his life, bared her heart and soul to him to convince him to come back. Then she lost him for such a long time, but still, she clung to him. She thought about him over and over again so she wouldn't forget, so that he wouldn't be taken over by someone else's memories. Now, she's home. And she _really_ wouldn't mind getting dinner sometime, you know?

She thought he wanted her. When he put his hand on her cheek after Jacksonville, it had felt like he wanted her. When they kissed over there, it had felt like he wanted her. When he tangled his fingers in her hair and parted his lips against her own, it had felt like he wanted her. When he agreed to come back for her, it had felt like he _wanted her_.

He held her hand in the hospital and kissed her forehead. Doesn't that mean something? Doesn't that mean he missed her too?

Then why won't he just _ask_?

He just calls mostly every evening and the conversation is:

"Hi."

"Hey."

"How are you?"

"Fine. How about you?"

"I'm alright. You're sure you're feeling okay?"

"Yeah. I feel fine."

"You're sure? Because Broyles said - "

"Don't worry about what Broyles said. I'm fine, I promise."

"Okay. You need anything?"

"No, I think I'm good."

"Okay. If you do, just call. At any time. You know it doesn't bother me."

"I know. Thanks, Peter."

"Don't worry about it."

"How's Walter?"

"He's as Walter as ever. He's in the kitchen baking something now. It smells…interesting."

"Hmmm. Well, I can't wait to hear how delicious it tasted."

"Of course."

…

"Well, I better go. I think Walter may be in the process of burning the house down. I'll call you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, that'd be great."

"Okay. Bye, Olivia."

"Bye."

Or some variation. And every time her phone rings and he is on the other end, she thinks that this is the conversation when he's finally going to ask.

And he never does.

Hell, she'll take drinks, if not dinner. Or an invitation to the nightly Bishop Bakery. Or he can just invite himself over. He used to invite himself over _all the time_. She couldn't count the number of times she found him on her doorstep – sometimes with a phone call, but many times without – holding a bag of Thai food and a DVD.

_"I come bearing gifts. I've got delicious food in one hand and quality entertainment in the other. I trust that you have the alcohol."_  
"I think that I may have something to drink laying around this place somewhere. Good thing too, because if that movie you're holding is as good as the last one you brought, we're going to need it to make it to the end."  
"That's half the fun, isn't it?" 

And they would sit on the couch and watch anything ranging from cheap horror movies to _The Universe_ to old black and white films starring people like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. There would be two finished beverages on the table, empty food containers in the trash can in the kitchen. They would laugh at inappropriate times and he would try and impress her by rattling off random bits of movie trivia he knew.

And sometimes, halfway through the movie, their hands would touch where they rested together on the middle cushion of the couch. Neither of them would adjust their positions. Neither of them would pull away.

Every once in a while, he would call her sweetheart. And she didn't stop him.

(He hasn't called her that since she returned. She knows she's only been back for a week and a half, and it was really only every once in a while, but she wants to hear it all the same.)

On those nights, it had felt like he wanted her.

Had she read too much into it? She didn't think so. It was _him_ , after all, who had tried to kiss her first. It was always him who called, him who came over, him who seemed to give, give, give while she chose what to receive.

She hadn't. It was impossible. He kissed her back. He came _home_.

So why wouldn't he just _ask_ her?

She'd pushed him away for so long. She'd ignored the way he would brush up against her too many times for it to be accidental. She'd turned away when she felt his stare linger on her too long to be friendly, because this wasn't supposed to happen again, not after John.

Then he glimmered and left and it had hurt _so much_.

She realized that she had tried so hard to resist him. But somehow, Peter Bishop patiently toiled and chipped away at the barriers she put up. He wormed his way under her skin and into her heart and no matter how much she attempted to avoid it, Peter Bishop had won.

And she stopped fighting it, stopped being afraid. She breathed it in, drowned in it, and when she saw him again, she didn't hold anything back. It was her turn to give. And he received.

Didn't he?

When she sat in that dark, cold cell on Liberty Island with dotted lines painted across her forehead and under her eye, assuredly waiting her execution, she had let herself imagine. She pretended that she had escaped, and managed to cross over. She pictured the look on his face when he saw her for the first time, the kiss and embrace with which he would greet her. She thought about movie nights that would start the same but end much differently, with him and her and a bed. She envisioned mornings spent beside him, warm in his arms, one of his legs between hers and a soft kiss pressed to her shoulder as she woke. She heard three words that she had vowed to never say to anyone except her sister and niece ever again. She saw a proposal and a house and a wedding. Someday. A baby. A family.

And she clung to this, to the fantasy, since it didn't matter and she was going to _die_.

Did it matter now?

_Why wouldn't he ask?_

She thinks about just asking him, but every time she decides she's going to she manages to convince herself to wait it out one more day, just another conversation, because surely _tomorrow_ would be the day. She tells herself that maybe he _does_ have a reason, something that is making him put it off for just a few days, and that she must be patient. After all, wasn't he patient with her?

So she is left to sit alone with her case files, cereal, and liquor, trying to wait good-naturedly for the phone to ring and his voice to finally ask the question she wants to hear. For Broyles to text her that he wants her in the Federal Building tomorrow bright and early, ready to give report and then go back out into the field.

Until then, she supposes, she's just left to wonder.

_(I wonder why there's beer in the fridge that I would never buy myself and I wonder why his science movies are sitting by my television. I wonder if I should double check to see if she moved anything around and I wonder if I should finally take that laundry out of the washing machine and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…)_

She tries to ignore the voice inside her head that whispers to her as she lays between sheets that feel different somehow, late at night, that what she's really waiting for is the other shoe to drop.

_(I wonder why this pillow smells like Peter.)_


	7. Yellow, Pt. 1

**_yellow, pt. 1_ **

The world is falling apart.

She failed, he failed, they all failed. And now Earth is crumbling around them.

They sit across from each other in a lab at Massive Dynamic, fingers laced together across a cold, metallic table. The area has been long deserted, as hope for any kind of solution faded with each tick of the clock until they simply ran out of time. Darkness engulfs them, the power shutting down for good a few hours ago. A single, narrow window casts dull gray light into the room.

Walter and Astrid are still in Boston, but phones no longer work, and they couldn't possibly get to Harvard no matter how they tried.

They'll never see either of them again. Her heart breaks.

"Peter," she whispers, for comfort, for no reason other than the fact that she has hardly any moments left to say his name.

"'Livia," he echoes. He tightens his grip on her hands.

They do not need to look outside to know that this is the end. The building shakes. There is a noise that is occurring with increasing frequency. She likens it to thunder, the omen of the final storm, though it doesn't sound similar to thunder at all. It is deeper, louder, makes the hair on her arms stand up straight. It bellows with the promise of destruction.

She had never feared for her life, not really. Even when facing the most dangerous, menacing tasks, a horror of death seldom crossed her mind. She was a soldier who was committed to one thing: honor. Honor to one's task, honor to one's authority, and honor to one's world. Even if that meant sacrificing yourself.

And she knew first-hand that there were fates much worse than death to fret over.

However, as she stares at him now - his blue eyes heavy, tired, and _sad_ \- one thought makes itself clear.

_I don't want to die._

The ceiling cracks.

" _Peter_."

She gets from her chair and walks around to him. He extends his arms and she crawls into his lap, pulling her knees up to her chest and tucking her head under his chin.

It's not fair, she decides. She's never had anything as good as this, someone as wonderful, constant, and warm as him. And she doesn't want to give it up.

It's not fair. She loves him and she doesn't want to die and she doesn't want him to die.

His arms cradle her and he smooths her hair with his hand.

"I'm sorry," she says, tears beginning to fall down her face.

"I love you," he responds.

She lets out a quiet whimper, and turns her head to place a kiss on his neck.

"I love you, too."

The earth shakes violently once more. Except this time, it doesn't stop. Two, three, five minutes pass and the ground still moves beneath them.

This is the end. She knows it in her bones. He seems to as well, squeezing her to him more tightly.

"Peter," she cries quietly, her call barely audible above the roar of annihilation around them. But he hears her, pressing his lips to her temple in response.

"I love you so much," he tells her again.

She runs a hand through his hair, tangling her fingers in his short brown locks and pulling his face closer to hers. She kisses him fiercely, for the last time. Then she settles into his embrace, and waits. Waits for pain. Waits for oblivion. Waits to die.

_I don't want to die._

She closes her eyes, and in these final moments, she pretends that she doesn't. She envisions that instead of fallen saviors, they had been nobody. They had lived in a suburb of Boston with a couple of kids and a backyard. Or they had lived alone, but together, getting married and living out their years with one another. Or they had traveled the world, or had different jobs, or had met in high school and stayed together.

She pretends that they got a fairy-tale ending.

As pieces of rubble begin to collapse around them, they hug each other closer. She tries to escape her newfound fear of demise by inhaling his scent and feeling his skin and imagining that somehow, the last page of their story was happy.

_"I want to know what that feels like."_

Suddenly, the world around them falls silent. And she's sure that it's happened. She's sure she has perished.

By some miracle, she can still feel his arms around her, so she keeps her eyes shut and cuddles further into him, waiting for the illusion to fade.

" _Olivia_."

His awed words bring her out of her reverie.

She opens her eyes reluctantly, expecting him to disappear. He doesn't, though. She tilts her chin up to look at him, but he does not stare back at her. Instead, his eyes are wide as they dart around the room, filled with wonder and trepidation.

"What?" she questions.

It's then she notices that the room is bright. Like sunshine is pouring in through the windows. It is a stark, welcome contrast from the dreariness of the end of everything But how…

"Look," he urges her.

She does. She lifts her head up off his chest. Her eyebrows pull together instantly.

The light. It _is_ shining in through the window.

She questions, "How is that…"

She trails off. And she finally understands.

" _Oh_."

She sits up and takes Peter's hand, both of them continuing to gaze around the neat lab, tools organized, metallic tabletops polished, a wall made of windows letting the afternoon sun into the room. If she listens closely, she thinks she might be able to hear cars drive by on the busy road below.

Walter had always told them that there were billions of universes, so many more than the two they knew.

It seems she's found a new one.


	8. Change

**_change - season 3, 3x09_ **

She laughs.

In between her sobs, she laughs once. The sound surprises even her, and she lifts her head, clamping her hand over her mouth. She stares at the gray t-shirt through cloudy, wet eyes. It lays in a ball on the ground three feet from her. She wants to burn it. Along with her couch and her clothes and her sheets and her bed. Oh my God, her _bed_ …

She wants to see the entire apartment go up in flames.

And then she laughs again, which turns into a hiccup and then into another sob. She moves to lay on the floor, curling up on her side and kicking the shirt even further away as she does. Suddenly, all she desires is sleep. To lose herself in slumber and not wake up for fifty years, when no one will remember her name and she can start anew. But she can practically _smell_ her scent all over the sofa from here, and there is no way in _hell_ she's going anywhere near that bed ever again.

So she remains on the cold ground, her wet hair serving as her only pillow. Hair that is still a shade too dark, with bangs that persistently fall into her eyes.

She feels like an intruder on her own life. And sometimes, she wonders if she even truly knows who she is. Where she's supposed to be.

She laughs again, and the noise is quiet and breathy through the tears that still flow steadily down her cheeks. After a while, she can't tell anymore. If she's laughing or crying.

She just finds it funny, she supposes. How two letters can change your life.

_You belonged with me._


End file.
